


hand covers bruise (don't feel a thing)

by wayonwayout



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (fisticuffs! what a great tag), Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 13:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10021814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: Now, as Jughead drops his jacket to Archie's bedroom floor and tugs his tie loose and crooked, it’s all Archie can think about: the way Betty’s voice had dropped, surreptitious, as she whispered, “He’s lying about something, Arch.”“Alright, fight club,” Jughead says, snapping his suspenders. “You gonna show me some moves?”





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is like, a slice of life if that life involved murder? it's weird and sort of an experiment and it was meant to go somewhere else entirely but then got derailed by my brain's particular hang-ups. also, archie's perspective voice is a work in progress, but! i think it came out okay. 
> 
> **warnings** : i'm not sure exactly how to warn with this one. i wanted to work with what we saw of archie boxing, because boxing after trauma is a really intense thing that i've actually done, and it gets even more intense when there's another person present in the space with you. but i'm not sure how to warn for that. i can say that a punching bag is the only casualty here! but the intensity may read to you like physical aggression or nonsexual kink, either of which may not be what you're wanting to read. my intention was to capture that kind of weird, intimate, hurt moment of catharsis between two people when you're engaging in this physical thing that's impacting on both of you, consensually, with 100% freedom to stop at any time. except they're messed up kids who don't really know what they're doing. so! it may not be your cup of tea, so pls take care of urself first and foremost.

“So it’s been a while since I’ve been in your room,” Jughead says, “but I’m pretty sure _that_ is new.”

Archie hadn’t realized how much a giant punching bag in the middle of the room really ate up the space, but with Jughead in it -- Jughead and his _questions_ , and the way he’s always _watching_ \-- it feels about five times smaller than it usually does.

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I’m trying to put on some more muscle. Reggie and I are both up for varsity captain.”

Jughead makes a face, like there’s a bad smell under his nose. “Congratulations?”

“Very heartfelt, Jug,” Archie says, but the normalcy of it makes something in him unwind.

He hadn’t been expecting it when his dad came up to him on the Blossoms’ driveway with one hand on Jughead’s shoulder like he thought Jug might make a break for it. Betty trailed behind them, looking quietly amused.

“We’re giving Jug a lift,” Fred had announced. “And a bite to eat. And he can spend the night, if he wants.”

No part of it was phrased like either Archie or Jughead had a choice in the matter.

“Sure, dad,” Archie had said, and Jughead had sort of slouched lower and said, “Cool beans, Mr. Andrews.”

And then:

Fred steered Jughead into shotgun and spent the whole ride bombarding him with questions about school and the _Blue and Gold_ while Jug, with less and less wariness and more and more mischief as the ride went on, tried his best to answer in just monosyllables. In the backseat, Betty rolled her eyes at Archie. She looked really pretty, but sort of -- distant. He pulled out his phone and texted,

_did smthng happen?_

She glanced down at her phone, then made a confused face at him.

 _W u & jug, _ he added.

She considered it for a moment, then texted back,

_consequences of sleuthing. that house is weirder than we all thought. & then we ran into ur dad & he asked if he could give us a lift _

Archie frowned.

_thats it?_

In the front seat, Fred burst out laughing, and an impish grin was tugging at the corner of Jughead’s mouth.

Betty typed, paused, and typed some more.

_J said no at first. he was being shifty, arch. and ur dad asked where his dad was living now and j went WHITE. Said he didnt want to go home just yet, he & his dad were fihgting. So ur dad insisted he come with us _

Archie gripped his phone tighter and tighter as he read. Each sentence hit like the sick, slow ricochet of a swing flying over its beam to jerk back to the ground, thrown up again, and again. He looked up at Betty and saw everything he was feeling reflected back: frustration, confusion, _concern_. She made a helpless face.

He shoved his phone into his pocket and stared forward. _Jughead_. Jughead was being _shifty._ Jughead was fighting with his dad again. That last part, Archie could have guessed if he'd put more than five seconds of thought into it, but he hadn't.

He was such a shitty friend.

A light tap on his arm drew him back, and Betty leaned in, brows drawn together with worry.

“He’s lying about something, Arch," she said.

“Who’s lying about something?”

Jughead had always had the worst timing and the best ears.

Betty glanced at Archie, then turned forward, smiling crookedly. “Who isn’t, at this point?”

Jughead laughed, and it came out strange, too-knowing. Archie shivered.

In the rearview mirror, Fred’s eyes cut across all of them; Archie could tell by the crinkling at the corners that his dad was frowning. “Remember when we had nice conversations in this car?” Fred said, wry. “I miss those days.”

Now, as Jughead drops his jacket to Archie's bedroom floor and tugs his tie loose and crooked, it’s all Archie can think about: the way Betty’s voice had dropped, surreptitious, as she whispered, “ _He’s lying about something, Arch.”_

“Alright, fight club,” Jughead says, snapping his suspenders. “You gonna show me some moves?”

Archie looks at him -- smirking mouth, wiry frame, skinny sprinter’s legs and Chucks under his dress pants. “I don’t think you could handle my moves.”

And that -- comes out wrong, comes out _weird_ , and Jughead’s eyes go a little wide and Archie feels himself flush.

“I mean -- you should probably stick with what you know best,” he says hurriedly. “Pissing people off and running away before they can take a swing. I’m afraid if you learned how to throw a punch, you’d stop running and start getting hit.”

Jughead raises his eyebrows. “I know how to throw a punch.”

Something about that makes the heat in Archie’s face shoot downwards, his whole chest into his stomach going warm and -- lower.

He clears his throat. This is _dumb_. He’s being dumb. “I’m not gonna ask where you learned that,” he says. “Let’s talk about something else, come on --”

“You’d rather sit in awkward silence for the rest of the night than watch me throw a punch? Wow, dude. You’re even more of a glutton for punishment than I thought.”

Jughead is _pushing_ this, and Archie doesn’t know _why_. He can see it, though, what Betty was seeing -- there’s something about Jug that’s tightly wound, even more than usual. He’s always been high-strung, but since he hit teenagehood he did the opposite of what every other boy in their grade did -- he slowed down, in, like, a predatory way, like a big cat slouching through tall grass. Deceptively still. But now he’s almost visibly jittering, flexing and curling his fingers at his sides, shoulders too tight.

He’s also not exactly wrong about the awkward silence thing. Archie is _trying_ but every time they’re in the same place alone, it’s all either big, earth-shaking confessions or fights or… silence. They don’t know what to do with each other anymore.

“Okay,” Archie says. “Fine, you want to break your hand on this thing, fine by me. It's --”

“My funeral?”

Archie almost swings around and decks him. Instead, he grabs the wraps off his desk.

“Give me your hands,” he says, and when Jughead does, he steps into his space, shoves up his sleeves, and gets to work. He doesn’t think about what he’s doing, or how close they’re standing, or how sometimes Jughead makes him _so mad_ he just wants to -- to grab him and make him look him in the face and be _real_ with him for once. Make him show Archie who’s back there behind all that armour, because Archie doesn’t know anymore.

Those big, earth-shaking confessions are all Archie’s, and he hasn’t known _Jughead_ , not like that, for months now. But Jughead’s skin is soft and cool against his, fine bones disappearing under rough cotton. Writer’s hands.

“Here,” Archie says when he’s done. He looks up to find Jughead looking back at him, and swallows. “Take off your tie, you look stupid.”

“Like I go to a school named after a saint,” Jughead agrees, and hooks two fingers -- wrapped in dirty white, nothing like his clean sterile shirt, to the first knuckle -- into the knot, tugging it loose until it's all the way off; his adam’s apple peeks through the collar of his shirt. He pulls his hat off too and runs a hand through his hair. “With too many rich kids and not enough moral fibre to go around.”

Archie’s heart is pounding against his ribs, loud in his ears, an oddly urgent drumbeat.

“Hit with the first two knuckles or you’ll really feel it tomorrow,” he says as he ducks behind the bag, not looking at Jughead. “I mean it, Jug. I’m not gonna listen to you complain all night. Some of us are used to eight hours.”

“ _That’s_ a lie,” Jughead mutters. He sounds too thoughtful.

Archie braces his shoulder against the bag. “Shut up and hit me.”

The first impact comes harder than he’s expecting. Not hard enough to knock him over, not even close, but hard enough that he _feels_ it. The bag thumps against his chest like the kick of a defibrillator. It shoves the breath right out of him.

The next punch hits, then another. Something inside him _rattles_ , and then -- settles.  

Punching the bag alone in his room for hours, he’d been chasing after something. Some way to shut his brain up, just long enough that the steel band around his ribs loosed its hold. But it had just made the walls feel closer, like how walking alone down a street at night makes the shadows seem longer. You’re never more aware of a threat than when you’re running from it.

Here, now, he’s not alone.

Jughead’s breathing is loud in the room once the ringing in Archie’s ears fades. Loud, and frenetic, like a kettle on the verge of boiling. The moments between punches last longer than the punches themselves -- he doesn’t know how to follow through right. It’s like he has to process each hit after it happens, like he has to stop and wonder what the fuck he’s doing, gather himself up for the next one.

Archie can relate.

“Come on, man,” he says. “Stop thinking so much. You’re always thinking.”

“I can’t tell if that’s hypocrisy or insight,” Jughead pants, then draws back, telegraphing like crazy, and hits _hard_. It thunders through Archie’s shoulder, down his sternum, into his hips; his heels skid back on the floor in his nice dress shoes.

He’s panting too. “What’s the difference?”

“How self-aware you’re feeling tonight,” Jughead says, a twist in his voice -- the one Archie knows so well now he can picture the jagged smile, like Jughead’s laughing back at the world that’s spent so much time laughing at him. But also like he knows who’s going to have the _last_ laugh, and he’s not telling.

Archie hates that smile. Hates all the secrets in it. Sometimes he wants to just grab Jughead, one hand on either side of his face, and -- and --

“Come on, Jug,” he says, spreading his feet wider to brace. “You’ve got to let go sometime, right?”

It’s like something snaps.

He couldn’t say how long it goes for. The punches come hard, fast, frantic -- but never anywhere near his hands on the sides of the bag or his face poking out from behind it. The chain rattles above their heads, and the bag creaks between them, and there’s no more talking, just the harsh rasp of their breath. Archie’s head hasn’t felt so clear in -- months. The adrenaline is pounding through his veins, lighting his nerves up like sparklers. Sweat drips down his forehead into his eyes so he squeezes them shut and just _feels_.

Then Jughead makes this _sound_ \-- this wretched, hurt sound, like he’s the one who’s been punched. And then he starts to laugh.

Archie opens his eyes and finally, finally looks up at Jughead. And Jughead is grinning, toothy, sweat-streaked, his bangs sticking to his forehead as he whales on the bag between them.

When Jughead meets his eyes, he seems as shocked by all of it as Archie is, and it just makes him laugh harder, eyes crinkling stupidly, until Archie starts to smile too, helpless to stop. Then he’s chuckling, then laughing, wheezing for breath so his ribs ache from something other than the impact of the bag; Jughead’s jabs become sloppy, distracted, until finally his knuckles skitter off the bag entirely and Archie has to jump back to avoid a direct hit to his nose.

“Holy shit,” Jughead pants, and then he’s stumbling backwards, his body a long arch as he laughs up at the ceiling.

“You almost got me, asshole!” Archie says, but it comes out breathless with his own giggles. He feels _drunk_.

“My arms feel like noodles, dude,” says Jughead. “My fist would probably implode on impact. Like a crash test dummy having a really bad day.”

He sounds -- stoned, delighted, dumb. Like a _teenager_ for once. Like the kid Archie used to know.

Jughead’s still going, swaying on his feet. "Jesus, I'm not gonna be able to feel my arms for a week. I'm honestly not even sure I have arms anymore, and you know, I'm at peace with it. Being at peace with anything is kind of counter to my _modus operandi_ , but I think -- you know, I think I can work with this. Just not with my arms."

Archie straightens, and grabs his water bottle off his desk to shove it at Jug. “Breathe, dude.”

His mind feels so, so quiet. Like all the noise has been burned out of it, and what’s left behind is just -- him. The him without the other stuff. Not like none of what’s happened -- all this shit, all the stuff he doesn't know how to put a name to -- is real, but like, for a moment, he can see who he’ll be when it stops hurting so much, when he doesn’t feel like he’s two seconds from throwing up every damn moment of the day anymore.

Jughead empties the water bottle, then collapses on Archie’s bed, arms flung out at his sides. His dress shirt is rumpled and damp with sweat; Archie can see the pink of flushed skin through where it sticks. He grins up at Archie, and Archie grins back without even thinking about it.

Jughead tips his head back with a laugh, and raises a hand to inspect it. “I’m literally shaking.”

“That’s normal,” Archie says, and drops down onto the bed beside him. “Your body’s not used to it. You’re gonna be so mad at me in the morning, dude.”

Jughead looks at him through sweat-soaked bangs, green eyes glinting. “You should be used to that by now.”

“Shut up,” Archie says, laughing, and drags a pillow over to smack him with it.

It’s quiet for a moment while they catch their breath, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It feels like the air’s been cleared, somehow. Archie watches Jughead’s chest rise and fall, and coasts on the leftover adrenaline, the way his brain isn’t shouting DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! for the first time in ages.

He thinks he can feel Jughead’s gaze on him; then Jug lifts his hand again and says, “Was that weird?”

When Archie looks up, Jughead is inspecting the way the wraps travel around his knuckles. He’s very focused about it, like he thinks if he acts casual enough Archie won’t notice how glaringly out of character that question was.

Archie notices.

It’s not that Jughead doesn’t care what people think about him. It’s that Jughead doesn’t care what _most_ people think about him. Say, a good ninety-nine percent of the population. Up until just now, Archie was pretty sure he was one of them.

“No,” he says, even though it’s kind of a lie. “We’ve definitely done weirder things, dude.”

They _have_ , but -- not many, that he can remember, that made his whole body buzz like this. Like a guitar string being tuned -- it’s like they’re both vibrating on the same frequency. He can _feel_ Jughead, even though they’re not touching. And not in the sad way, where he can feel Jughead lurking these days, feel all the ways they’re distant like a ghost limb. Right now, collapsed on this bed beside each other, Jug feels like -- like part of him. Like when you rub a balloon against the ceiling and then hold it over your skin.

Like they might as well be touching.

“It’s just this _day_ ,” Jughead says. His voice is lower, like he’s starting to come down. “I just --”

He breaks off. But not like he’s hiding something; it almost sounds like he’s about to cry.  

Archie swallows a few times. “Yeah,” he says. “It felt too real. It was real before, I know, but something about being in that house -- I’d never been there before, you know that?”

Jughead hums, then clears his throat. “I have.”

“What?” Archie says. “Really?”

The bed shifts under him as Jughead shrugs. “Just once. Jason was helping me with a project for a class.”

Archie is almost certain he’s lying, even though his voice doesn’t shake at all. And that -- that kind of scares him.

He’d always thought Jughead was the most honest person he knew.

“The house felt just as fucked up then, let me tell you,” Jughead continues. “And his mom -- gives a very _Mommie Dearest_ vibe, between you and me.”

Something in Archie shudders. “She told me I was like him.”

“And touched your hair.”

“Yeah, okay, and touched my hair. But -- I dunno. I never really _knew_ him.”

Jughead -- sighs.

“You’re not like him,” he says. “But -- to be safe -- don’t go over there again, and definitely not on the full moon or after midnight. If ever body-snatching was going to occur, that would be the house for it.”

It's so _blasé_ , the way he says it. “She’s in _mourning_ ,” Archie says, a little of that frustration from earlier coming back. But Jughead just looks back at him steadily.

It hits Archie for the first time that maybe Jughead is in mourning too.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the ache in his shoulders and arms until his mind is quiet again. Then he pushes himself up on one elbow so he can look down at Jug, full in the eyes, and say, “Are you okay?”

Jughead doesn’t even hesitate. “Are you?”

There’s the answer Archie would like to give, and there’s the one that’s true. And this thing with Jughead -- it’s never going to get fixed if _both_ of them are lying. It’s probably his turn, Archie figures, to be the brave one and tell the truth, like he couldn’t last summer.

“No,” he says.

A hundred thoughts flicker behind Jughead’s eyes. The corners of his mouth twitch downwards. They’re close enough that Archie can see all of it, all the little things Jughead’s usually so good at hiding.

Jughead’s throat bobs above the white of his collar. “I’m missing things,” he says, quietly. “And I’ve always told myself, whatever comes my way, I can figure it out, but -- it’s all coming at once, and I don’t know if I can hold out.”

“You can,” Archie says. He reaches between them and curls his hand around Jug’s wrist where it lies limp on the mattress. Jughead twitches, then relaxes into his hold. “And if you can’t, then -- then I’ll be there and I’ll help.”

He can hear the response already -- the sardonic _will you?_ \-- but it never comes. Instead, Jughead blinks tiredly at the ceiling. “Okay,” he says.

Archie can’t tell if he’s lying, but. It’s going to have to be enough, for now.

He drops back down to the mattress and closes his eyes again, but he doesn’t let go of Jug’s wrist. When his dad comes to check in on them ten minutes later, that’s how he finds them: sweaty and dozing, tied together by Archie’s fingers like two tin cans vibrating along the same thin string.

 

 


End file.
